The Boston Celtics reloaded their roster with a pair of superstars in Gordon Hayward and Kyrie Irving over the summer and while the burden of how far the team will go in the upcoming season mostly rests on the shoulders of those two players, the roles that’ll be played by the peripheral components of the team will just be as essential to the success Boston is aiming to get.

Take for example Marcus Smart, who’s about to enter his fourth season in the NBA. Smart has been part of the Celtics’ rebuild and has been spending his offseason with Celtics assistant coach Jay Larranaga and former Celtic guard Chauncey Billups working to improve his game. This is well documented in a story by Adam Himmeisbach of The Boston Globe.

“I think role models are always really important,” Larranaga said. “And as Marcus Smart and I have worked more and more together, you start to break down all the different parts of Marcus as a person — physically, athletically, career path, all those different things.” Larranaga noticed similarities between Smart and retired seven-time All-Star Chauncey Billups. So he contacted former Celtics assistant and current Cavaliers head coach Tyronn Lue, who is one of Billups’s closest friends, and asked if Billups might be open to meeting with Smart. Billups responded almost immediately.

Smart could really learn a lot by hanging out on the court with an accomplished NBA player like Billups, who was drafted third overall by Boston in the 1997 NBA Draft and won an NBA title with the Detroit Pistons in 2004. It’s big plus for Smart that Billups is a fan of his work on the floor.

“He said he was already a big fan of Marcus’s, but also thought there were things in his game he could refine, and maybe had some experience and knowledge he could pass on that would be helpful,” Larranaga said. “I just thought it was a great role model for Marcus. Even their style of play as physical guards that are really good in pick-and-rolls, really good at hitting the open man and just making all their teammates better, it just seemed to make sense.”

Perhaps part of Smart’s basketball education he’s been getting from Billups is how to get better at shooting from distance. Smart is a terrible three-point shooter, making just 29.1 percent of his shots from beyond the arc, which allows defenses to take him for granted when he’s got the rock. Billups, on the other hand, finished with a 38.7 three-point shooting percent clip.

Billups also parted other wisdom on offense to Smart.

On the court, Billups showed Smart simple things, like new and creative ways to find openings for his shot. But Smart found Billups’s advice about preparation most useful. “Just becoming more of a professional and working smarter, and doing things to help in the long run,” Smart said. “Just getting a routine down, keeping that routine and finding what works for you. Keeping it short and sweet to get to the stuff you’re going to do in the game.”

Smart is bound to be an unrestricted free agent next year and it won’t hurt his value on the market if he developed and improved parts of his game heading into the new season.